Wednesday, 2 December 2015

Ten Things the Ancients Did Better than Us

Just a
couple of decades ago, the people of ancient civilizations were viewed as
simple, primitive people.
However, numerous discoveries since then have revealed a number of surprising
facts about ancient cultures, namely that many of them possessed advanced
knowledge of metallurgy, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, and more. With this
knowledge they forged steel stronger than anything else seen until the
Industrial Revolution, created a recipe for concrete so durable that their
buildings would endure for millennia longer than the constructions of today,
cut stones and assembled walls so precisely that attempts at modern-day
replications have failed. Scientists are still scratching their heads over some
of the amazing accomplishments of ancient civilizations. Here we feature ten of
them.

Who would
have thought that 21st century governments would be looking to
1,500-year-old technology
for guidance on how to solve water access problems? But that is exactly what is
happening in Lima, Peru.

Peru has
been facing a severe water crisis as chronic problems, such as polluted water
supplies, and environmental change combine to undermine the water security of
the entire country. However, a new plan has been put forward by Lima’s water
utility company, Sedapal, to revive an ancient network of stone canals that
were built by the Wari culture as early as 500 AD, in order to supply the
population with clean, unpolluted water.

The Wari
built an advanced water conservation system that captured mountain water during
the rainy season via canals. The canals transported the water to places where
it could feed into springs further down the mountain, in order to maintain the
flow of the rivers during the dry season.

Many ancient
civilizations are known for their advanced construction of cisterns, canals,
aqueducts, and water channelling technology, including the Persians,
Nabataeans,
Romans,
Greeks,
Harrapans,
and many more.

Over 2,000
years ago, ancient people in the Levant were forging swords made of steel so
advanced that blacksmiths would not come close to creating anything of equal
quality until modern times. The metal was so strong that the swords could slice
straight through objects made of other metals.

The steel,
known as Damascus steel, was produced out of a raw material, known as Wootz
steel, from Asia. Other materials were added during the steel’s production to
create chemical reactions at the quantum level. It was first used around 300
BC, but was produced en masse in the Middle East between 1100 and 1700 AD.

The secret
of making the Middle East’s Damascus Steel only re-emerged under the inspection
of scanning electron microscopes in modern laboratories.

Today’s
concrete structures are typically designed to last between 100 and 120 years. However, the Romans
built structures from concrete 2,000 years ago that have maintained their
structural integrity to this day. So what was their secret?

The Romans
made concrete by mixing lime, volcanic rock, and seawater. The combination of
the three instantly triggered a chemical reaction in which the lime
incorporated molecules into its structure and reacted with the ash to cement
the whole mixture together. The ancient seawater concrete contains the
ideal crystalline structure of Tobermorite, which has a greater strength and
durability than the modern equivalent.

As well as
being more durable, Roman concrete was also more environmentally-friendly
compared to today’s concrete. Conventional modern cement requires heating a mix
of limestone and clay to 1,450 degrees Celsius which releases significant
amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. In contrast, Roman cement used much less
lime and made it from baking limestone at 900 degrees Celsius, requiring much
less fuel.

These days,
we’d be lucky to get a decent highway built within a year. But it was not
always this way. Ancient people recognized the importance of roads and networks
linking together cities and settlements across regions and countries… and they
built them fast!

Qhapaq Nan,
otherwise known as the Main Andean Road, is a huge network of roads once used
by the mighty Inca Empire that extends over more than 30,000 kilometres. It was
the backbone of the Inca Empire’s political and economic power, connecting
production, administrative, and ceremonial centres of pre-Inca Andean culture.
The Incas of Cuzco achieved this unique infrastructure on a grand scale in less
than a century, extending their vast network across what is now Argentina,
Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

The Romans
too are known as expert road builders. About 1.7 million square miles of
territory was covered by the Roman roads, which were made with gravel, dirt,
and bricks made from granite and hard lava. Many ancient roads are still used
today.

Around the
world, we can find numerous examples of ancient stone-cutting so precise that they rival
creations of the modern day produced with advanced machinery. One prime
example can be found at Puma Punka, a 15,000-year-old archaeological site in
Bolivia that contains such incredible stonework that it looks as if the stones
were cut using a diamond tool. Enormous blocks weighing up to 800 tons,
consist of perfectly straight edges that lock perfectly into each other and
contain no chisel marks. Attempts to replicate the precision of the stonework
have failed.

Human
sacrifice is typically the first thing that comes to people’s minds when they think
about the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican cultures. However, there is much more
to these civilizations than this practice. One of their innovations was the
chinampa agricultural system, the so-called ‘floating gardens’ which can be
found on the shallow lake beds in the Valley of Mexico.

A chinampa plot was
constructed by staking out a rectangular enclosure into the marshy lakebed. The
enclosure would then be fenced in by joining the stakes with wattle. After
that, the fenced in area would be filled with mud and decaying vegetation. In
order to prevent the roots from becoming water-logged, it was important that
the fill brought the chinampa plot
above the lake level. Canals surrounding the chinampa plots formed an illusion that
these agricultural lands were floating on water, hence its misattribution as
‘floating gardens’. To further stabilise these plots of land, willows were
planted around the perimeter. This is due to the dense root system which, over
time, anchored the retaining walls of the structure and reduced the effects of
erosion. In order to ensure that the chinampas produced
good harvests throughout the year, it was vital that the supply of water was
well managed. During the rainy season, flooding would have been a problem.
Hence, a sophisticated drainage system, which included dams, sluice gates and
canals, were put in place to counter this problem. By using human excrement to
fertilise the crops, the Aztecs were also able to create a healthier living
environment as the city’s wastewater would have also been treated.

The system
of agriculture and waste water treatment seen in the floating gardens of
Mexico, was so advanced that there have been attempts (unsuccessfully) to
implement it in modern times.

The Inca
civilization is well-known for its advanced masonry work, much of which can
still be seen today in Machu Picchu and Sacsayhuaman in Peru. Their large dry
stone walls display huge blocks that had been carefully cut to fit together
tightly without mortar and with levels of precision unmatched anywhere else in
the Americas. The stones are so closely spaced that a single piece of paper
will not fit between many of the stones. This precision, combined with the
rounded corners of the blocks, the variety of their interlocking shapes, and
the way the walls lean inward (to prevent damage in the event of an earthquake)
have puzzled scientists for decades. The method used to match precisely
the shape of a stone with the adjacent stones is still unknown and attempts to
recreate the technique have all failed.

In the last
century, numerous ancient cities have been unearthed that have astounded
scientists and urban planners alike.

When
archaeologists discovered the 5,000-year-old site of Mohenjo Daro in Pakistan,
what they found was unprecedented in the region – the city demonstrated an
exceptional level of civic planning and amenities. The houses were furnished
with brick-built bathrooms and many had toilets. Wastewater from these was led
into well-built brick sewers that ran along the centre of the streets, covered
with bricks or stone slabs. Cisterns and wells finely constructed of
wedge-shaped bricks held public supplies of drinking water. Back in its day,
the city would have been home to around 40,000 inhabitants.

In the same
era, but on another continent, another great city was being constructed – Caral.
Located in the Supe Valley in Peru, Caral is a 5,000-year-old city that
consisted of huge monuments, including pyramids, plazas, amphitheatres,
temples, and residential areas. They had extensive agriculture, ate a varied
diet, developed the use of textiles, used a complex system for calculating and
recording, built water supply, and developed an intricate irrigation system.

Architects
are currently looking to Caral for inspiration in city planning. Japanese
architects intend to incorporate building designs that they implemented to
protect their people from earthquakes. The people of Caral suspended their
houses in baskets filled with stones that dissipated earth movement and
prevented collapse.

What is
certain is that recent discoveries have revealed just how advanced ancient
cultures were when it came to astronomical knowledge, and that they were far
from the primitive people they were once thought to be.

While there
is no doubt that modern-day weapons are far more superior to their ancient
counterparts in their ability to unleash mass death and destruction, there
exist a number of powerful ancient weapons that still elude scientists as to
their construction and capabilities.

Greek mathematician,
engineer, inventor, and astronomer, Archimedes (287 - 212 BC) is reported to
have created a heat ray weapon (sometimes called the ‘death ray’) to defend
against ships attacking Syracuse, an historic city in Sicily. According to 2nd
century AD author Lucian and centuries later, Anthemius of Tralles, the weapon
was made of large reflectors (possibly made from polished bronze or copper),
which were used to focus sunlight onto approaching ships, causing them to catch
fire.

Although its
existence has been hotly debated among historians, a number of tests have
accurately proven that such a weapon is possible. In 1973, the Greek scientists
Ioannis Sakkas set up 70 mirrors with a copper coating, which were pointed at a
plywood model of a Roman warship at a distance of 50 meters. When the mirrors
were focused accurately, the ship burst into flames within seconds.

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